I’ve been representing policyholders in insurance coverage litigation for 35 years, and I’m convinced that I’ll never understand the logic of insurance company claim departments. They settle cases that I think they might want to fight, and they fight cases tooth-and-nail that I think they really should settle. (Maybe it’s me.)

The carrier’s claim file

There’s a very true old quote about interpreting insurance policies that I (and other policyholder lawyers) like to cite.  It goes: “Ambiguity and incomprehensibility seem to be the favorite tools of the insurance trade in drafting policies. Most are a virtually impenetrable thicket of incomprehensible verbosity…The miracle of it all is that the English language

Earlier this month, I was asked by Elizabeth Lorell, an excellent defense lawyer, to speak at a CLE conference sponsored by her law firm.  (You can read Elizabeth’s bio here.) The audience consisted of other defense lawyers, and insurance company claims representatives.  In other words, I was basically a snake at a mongoose convention.

I remember sitting in a continuing legal education class once, where the speaker was an experienced employment defense lawyer. He said that, normally, he liked to open his talks with a funny story or a joke, but he couldn’t do that during this particular talk, because there was absolutely nothing funny about sexual harassment; in

There’s a famous (apocryphal?) story about Cato the Elder, one of the leaders of ancient Rome.  Cato was obsessed with destroying Carthage (now Tunis), the Roman Empire’s rival. He would end every speech (and apparently most conversations) with “Carthago delenda est” – Carthage must be destroyed.  The story goes that when Demosthenes (a prominent Greek

I admit it, I admit it –  I’m addicted to the TV show “Bar Rescue.” (When my daughter was about 12 years old, and my wife was out shopping for the day, we once binge-watched about six hours straight, which probably could get me into trouble with the child welfare authorities.)   The idea

I’ve sometimes commented on this blog that my first boss in the business warned me: “If you assume there’s no coverage, you won’t find any.” There are plenty of risk managers and brokers who believe that general liability insurance coverage exists primarily to protect against people falling down in the parking lot. Not suprisingly, many